A/B vs. W&Z, Round One

Info is slowly trickling out about the recent bang-up between Activision/Blizzard and Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward. Terminated studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella have filed suit against their former corporate masters, alleging wrongful termination, meanness, and stealing of royalties, and asserting that they own the rights to the Modern Warfare IP.

My buddy Bill Harris over at Dubious Quality has his usual insightful analysis of key portions of the lawsuit, so rather than just regurgitate what he said, I’ll send you there. Then come back here and listen to me.

While I wouldn’t put it past Activision/Blizzard to preemptively fire two employees as a way of minimizing royalty outlay and retain a valuable IP, it also wouldn’t surprise me if West and Zampella were shopping the studio. Infinity Ward is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision, but any corporate lawyer can tell you that there are ways for a wholly-owned subsidiary to fly the coop.

What matters here is not royalties (there’s so much money from Modern Warfare 2 that even the greediest should be satisfied), and not “insubordination,” and not even the fact that Infinity Ward wanted out of Activision. What matters here is the Modern Warfare IP, and (possibly) by extension the Call of Duty IP. If Infinity Ward owns one or both, or retains right of refusal against one or both, and if that is upheld by a court, then holy Christ did Activision screw the pooch with this Memorandum of Understanding.

But I don’t think Activision lawyers are that stupid. Everyone knew even back then that the real egg-laying goose is the Modern Warfare IP, not the Infinity Ward brand. I mean sure, Infinity Ward made the best Calls of Duty, with Treyarch’s additions mediocre at best; but remember Activision’s philosophy: any studio is capable of making any game from any franchise at any time. That’s why they gave Guitar Hero to Neversoft. To Activision, the fact that Infinity Ward’s CoD games and Modern Warfare were “better” doesn’t enter into the equation. Activision doesn’t care if its games are good. It cares if its games sell. And according to the stated Activision philosophy, franchise exploitation (at least one franchise installment per year) is the key to success.

Bill is right, I believe: this case will never go to trial, West and Zampella will release the IP to Activision (if they ever owned it in the first place), they’ll get several million dollars in settlement.

One key question, though, is “who are Jason West and Vince Zampella?” I don’t know anything about them. Are they nice? Are they dicks? I don’t know. I do know that the rest of Infinity Ward is suffering from pretty bad morale right now, and we’re likely to see mass resignations should West and Zampella be well liked and form a new independent studio. Oh sure, all those employees certainly signed non-competes, but such agreements are very difficult to enforce, especially in the videogames industry. So I wouldn’t worry about that if I were some designer at Infinity Ward hoping to jump ship to ZamWesta games.

About the author

Tap-Repeatedly Overlord Steerpike is a games industry journalist and consultant. His earliest memories are of video games, and hopes his last memories will be of them as well. He’s a featured monthly columnist with the International Game Developers Association, and is internationally published in an assortment of dull e-Learning texts and less dull gaming publications. He also lectures on games at various universities.

Interestingly, Microsoft is often highly spoken of as a publisher. Not always, but I know a lot of developers that had really positive experiences with them. THQ is supposed to be good unless you push them too hard. It will be interesting to see how Eidos behaves now that it’s owned by Square. Eidos always had bad management. It really depends whether you, as a developer, are more interested in retaining your independence or more interested in a reliable flow of cash.

If I were a developer, though, and I were given a choice of publishers, my first would probably be Zenimax Media Group. They’re the silent giant – they own both id Software and Bethesda but they’re almost never in the news. Zenimax has boatloads of cash and seems willing to take a fairly hands-off approach with development, particularly creative vision. The worst publisher is the kind that tries to direct the content and creative of your game, because you have to do what they say and it often conflicts with your own vision. “Hey, let’s put a turtle in this space shooter. Yeah, a wacky turtle. That you can ride.”

As for FEAR, the wrangling there was related to that acronym. If I recall correctly, Monolith just wanted to call the game “Fear,” but Vivendi thought an acronym would be cooler. Thus Fear became F.E.A.R.: First Encounter Assault Recon. Monolith hated it. So when Vivendi let them go and they went to Warner Bros., they agreed that Vivendi could keep the F.E.A.R. name while Monolith would keep the world and IP. Then of course Activision dissolved Vivendi and gave F.E.A.R. back to Monolith, so Project Origin kept its prefix even though Monolith thought it was stupid. By then it had brand cachet.

Mat C03/10/2010

I was listening to a Podcast recently that featured the creator of Broken Sword as a guest. They were discussing Sony’s purchase of Media Molecule as a first party studio and the Broken Sword dude (apologies, I can’t remember his name and Wikipedia is just too far along my list of favorites to navigate to from here..) spoke very well of Sony as a publisher. Said they had a great working relationship with Sony (I first played Broken Sword on the PSX, to be fair) and that they’re a very easy going company to work for in terms of allowing you creative freedom etc.

For some reason I always forget that Sony is a publisher. They are well liked – and in fact one of the only publishers that maintain an “avant-garde” design studio tasked with building important, artsy games regardless of financial loss: Fumito Ueda’s team, responsible for Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and the upcoming Last Guardian.

Developers really want creative freedom, while publishers have a responsibility to control a project that’s threatening to go off the rails. In a friendly relationship, everyone is happy. Unfortunately developers typically want to make good games, and publishers want to make games that sell, so there’s a disconnect.

xtal03/10/2010

A lot of good information in this article and the Dubious Quality one. I may take back some of the awful things I’ve said about Infinity Ward if it is in fact true that Activision demanded Modern Warfare 2 be released so quickly– and afterwards, series installments annually; I suppose that could be a contributing factor to how terribly lame the PC version ended up.

This is an interesting situation, and I wonder what will become of Infinity Ward once all is said and done.

Lewis B03/11/2010

I am stunned though at the law suit. Did Activision really think they could get away with such behaviour and think that they wouldn’t face legal action? In this day and age!

I hope W & Z take them for all they are worth, and settle for a greater sum than $36million dollars (£15million pounds). It’s really not a huge amount to start a brand new development studio and to lose the IP for one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world.